Our industry

Tate & Lyle operates primarily in two industries: corn wet milling and high-intensity sweeteners. Here you’ll find a brief explanation of each industry, with a link to a description of the manufacturing process.

Corn wet milling

Corn wet milling is a large industry in the corn-growing parts of the world. We have a network of corn wet milling plants in the USA and Europe. In the US, we process around 2% of the US annual corn crop.

Our plants take shelled corn (maize), separate the kernels into their core components (starch, oil, protein and fibre), and process them to create a range of products for the food and beverage industry, and paper industries. As a by-product of the corn wet milling process, we also produce feed products for farm animals and pets.

High-intensity sweeteners

The global high-intensity sweetener (HIS) market in 2013 was worth $1.2 billion. The sweetening power of this volume of HIS is equivalent to approximately 16 million tonnes of sugar. Within the HIS market, Tate & Lyle is the leading supplier in value terms with sucralose holding a 35% share by value and our SPLENDA® Sucralose accounting for the largest portion of this share.

SPLENDA® SucraloseSPLENDA® Sucralose is a high quality sweetener with a sugar-like taste and a sweetening power approximately 600 times that of sugar. It is unmatched in sugar-like sweetness and is highly stable. It can withstand high temperatures during processing and has a long shelf-life.

Tate & Lyle discovered sucralose in conjunction with researchers at Queen Elizabeth College, University London, in 1976. We subsequently developed the product in partnership with McNeil Nutritionals (a Johnson & Johnson company) to create SPLENDA® Sucralose, which was launched in 1992.

In terms of value, since its launch, SPLENDA® Sucralose has become the second largest HIS in the world, the largest in the US, and the largest in food globally. We produce SPLENDA® Sucralose at our high-tech facility in Singapore and sell it to the food, beverage and pharmaceutical industries. The consumer market is served by our partner McNeil Nutritionals, which markets and sells SPLENDA® No Calorie Sweetener table top products via grocery and foodservice outlets.